


Riddles About Ravens

by Rozarka



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Community: wizard_love, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Girl's First Orgasm, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Humor, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Penetrative Sex, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, Ravenclaw, Ravenclaws Being Compulsively Brainy, Rivalry, Romance, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-21
Updated: 2011-03-21
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:24:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rozarka/pseuds/Rozarka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why is Michael being a pillock? What was the nature of The Incident In the Loos? And why, indeed, is a raven like a writing desk?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Riddles About Ravens

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings/Content:** Possibly under-18 sexuality; Michael and Padma are late in their seventh year at the time.
> 
> This was written for leigh_adams for the 2011 [Wizard_Love](http://wizard_love.livejournal.com/) fic exchange, and originally posted [here](http://community.livejournal.com/wizard_love/129371.html). Thanks to Muridae and Anise for beta and cheerleading. <3

 

"Well, well, well."

Padma narrowed her eyes against the nonchalant smirk greeting her, as the door into the Ravenclaw common room slowly inched open.

"What's your problem, Corner, got something stuck in your throat?" she said with a sigh, trying to sidle past him through the narrow crack. He blocked her bodily, forcing her to crane her neck back to avoid staring right into his chest.

Michael Corner tilted his head to meet her gaze, his dark brown, curling hair falling into those long-lashed eyes of his. Michael's hair always looked like he came straight from making out with a girl (which, indeed, he often did), and his eyes were this strange, impossible-to-tell colour that appeared blue or grey or green depending on the light. The girls in Padma's dorm had on one occasion discussed this question in great detail, a discussion that had ended in laughter and a vigorous pillow fight when Padma broke through with a sour verdict of 'Muddy!'. The left one was slanted down a bit at the side since his face healed up after the Carrows did their worst on him last year, but it only made him look extra charming, sort of sensitive and melancholy, hinting at depths that weren't there. The sod was lucky like that.

His chest and torso were long and slender and wiry, and he seemed even taller than usual as he stretched an arm lazily over his head and combed his fingers back through that unruly fringe. "Knocker got the better of you, Patil?"

"No, I felt such a burning wish to see your gloating face at the door," she said irritably. Not yet two weeks into their eighth year, with severe torture and a battle behind him, and he was as much of a prat as ever. "Come on, it's late, I don't have the energy to spare to bitch at you."

"Could have fooled me." He grinned, now. "The day you don't have the energy to bitch at me, I will be checking your pulse."

"Ooh, isn't that caring of you?" she said with a mock flirty simper and a batting of eyelashes that would have been worthy of her twin. Padma straightened up to her full five feet two inches, and tried her imperious look. "Are you going to stand there being a pillock for the rest of the night?"

"A pillock?" Michael raised his eyebrows. "That's harsh. Did you know that it derives from a 16th century Norwegian word for 'dickhead'?"

"Yes, that will do nicely, too," she said, giving in to the temptation to put a palm flat on his chest and giving it a shove. "But I'm sure you made that up."

She'd budged him an inch or two, but he caught his balance at once and leaned his arm against the door frame, low enough that she knew any attempt to duck under it would be stopped. "Patil, you know that I wouldn't have to make something like that up," he replied, and annoyingly, he was right. Even for a Ravenclaw, Michael got his geeky reputation honestly.

"So," she said conversationally, "should I set up camp out here until someone else comes by to answer the riddle? Or yell for someone to come and let me in since you're being a complete and utter git? Or should I just grab my wand and hex you?"

"Git, now? I thought I was a pillock?" He tilted his head, smiling at her. "I'm the only one still up, everyone else has headed off to bed. I'm pretty sure you're the last one in; I mean, two hours after curfew? Yeah."

Padma dropped her hand to her wand. His hand was around her wrist in the same moment. "Responsible eighth-year like you, don't want to wake up the ickle first-years," he murmured. 

His touch seemed to burn her skin, but she'd be damned if she let him notice the effect on her. "I'm sure I could hex you and be quiet. Why are you being such a colossal pain in the arse?" she complained, a whine creeping into her voice. 

"Because if the situation were reversed, you'd be giving me hell, too," he stated in a tone of certainty.

She scowled at him. It was true. In fact, she was sure she had exploited with relish and for weeks every opportunity that she caught Michael unable to answer the knocker's riddle. Months even, what with those occasions being so rare.

"Plus, I'm thinking there might be something in this for me."

She rolled her eyes. "Now we're talking. Need some Arithmancy assistance, Corner?"

"As if. No, I'm thinking something more... hands on." He dropped his gaze thoughtfully to where his fingers were still encircling her wrist, and she did, too, in time to see his thumb gently stroke over her pulse point. The caress was soft and his fingers long and strong around her slender wrist, and her stomach dropped. She tried to yank her hand back, suddenly deeply flustered as she looked up into his eyes.

"That... that's not funny," she said, lamenting the stammer and the breathlessness in her voice.

"Good," he said, and to her relief and horror — horrified relief? — his voice was breathless, too. "It wasn't meant to be funny."

"I take it back. It was hilarious," she said, clenching her teeth and yanking again at her hand.

"You're not laughing." He held on to her hand with determination, and suddenly tugged her through the door and backed her up against it. His free hand cupped her cheek, and she felt an awful weakness seep into all limbs as she fell into those every-colour eyes.

"Don't," she said sharply, tearing herself out of the daze with a stab of panic. "You're just taking the piss."

"Shh." He glanced quickly over his shoulder, a clear reminder to be quiet. "I'm not. Tell you what, I'll let you go if you can answer a riddle _I_ give you."

Padma kicked his shin — he let out a low grunt, but stood his ground. "So magnanimous. You'll let me go because I bloody tell you to," she demanded with a sneer.

He smiled. "Afraid to take me up on the challenge?"

She rolled her eyes. "Right. Try me."

"All right. Why is a raven like a writing desk?"

For long seconds, she stared up at his face. Her mind turned the riddle over — something to do with quills? Or legs? Or... it was hard to think, with his gaze on hers. "A raven, right? A bird. Not a Raven _claw_?"

"Well, some birds are Ravenclaws, and roughly half of all Ravenclaws are birds," he replied, amused. "But no. An actual, feathered raven. It's from a Muggle children's book; wizarding houses don't factor into it."

"Is this a trick question?" she snapped. It was just too humiliating if Michael was going to catch her failing at a riddle twice the same night, and especially if this one had been intended for _children_ to solve. Unfair, too, with Michael being a half-blood and miles ahead on all things Muggle.

"All good riddles are trick questions. Here's another one. When I got together with Ginny Weasley, you were grumpy for a month. When I got together with Cho, you were grumpy for three months. What's the difference?"

"Two months. Except I _wasn't_." Pillock. "And... they both have legs, and... and they both have quills on them! The raven and the writing desk," she specified with a glare, when she saw his lips twitch. "Not Ginny and Cho. Well, I suppose they have legs and sometimes have quills on them, too."

Michael laughed. "That's not bad, Patil."

"All right, goodnight." She made as if to duck under his arm again, and he shifted, catching her in something that resembled an embrace.

"Not so fast. In fact, this was a riddle with no answer, or many answers. Who's to say that yours was the right one?"

"I _knew_ it was a trick. Of course, we all knew from Ginny Weasley that you're a sore loser."

"And of course, she omitted the not entirely irrelevant fact that she's an obnoxious winner. Here's another trick question. Do you remember when the Carrows caught me freeing little Andy McLeod last year, how you cried when Anthony and Terry carried me into the dorm?"

"Well, I've never seen anything so ugly," she huffed. "It was an aesthetic offence."

He nodded sagely, though she could see a spark of frustration in his eyes, and felt a stab of triumph that she'd finally got to him. She should have known that pride went before a fall. "Right. And do you remember that night last year when I told you where your clit was?"

Heat, mortified and excited at once, washed over her like a bright, bracing wave when she realised she'd been waiting for this since the moment he caught her wrist in his hand. "You did not!" she said furiously. "I knew exactly where it was!"

"But had no idea what to do with it." The corners of his mouth lifted up in the beginning of a smirk, and just because she wouldn't allow it, because it was intolerable to give him the upper hand — oh, definitely only because of that — she threw an arm around his neck and yanked his face down to hers, and kissed him.

***

It had been a simple matter of Michael needing to take a leak in the middle of the night, and of the girls' toilets being one door closer than the boys' loos. At three a.m., who cared? He opened the door, crossed the floor and then flung open the door to the nearest stall.

The screech that met him was almost as much of a shock as the sight itself. Michael staggered back, hit the sink with his arse, ricocheted off the porcelain to front-collide with the tiled wall, and finally made it back to the stall to slam the door shut and lean against it, panting heavily.

It had taken all of three seconds, and he was hard as a rock.

Inside the stall, stunned silence had taken over from the screech, suddenly broken by a low wail. "Corner, I'm going to _kill_ you!" 

"What the hell, Patil," he croaked. "Lock the fucking door, why don't you? That's what the lock is for!"

Promptly, he heard the bar click into the slot of the door latch. "I thought I had! If you hadn't come barging in here like a runaway locomotive—" She caught her breath. "This is the _girls'_ bathroom, you creep!"

"Right, so this is my fault?"

"Just go! And if you tell anyone, you'll regret the day you were born!"

"Patil, you're not crying, are you? Because if you're wanking and crying, you're doing it wrong."

"I'm not cry— wank— arrgh! _Go_!"

"You are, aren't you? Crying? I sure as hell saw you wanking. Okay, okay, I'm going!"

He pushed away from the door and breathed deeply, trying to will away the image that had burned itself into his retinas. Of Padma Patil sitting sprawled on the toilet lid, one arm behind her hip supporting her and the other shoved down her silk pyjama bottoms, her face flushed and tear-streaked and her bottom lip bitten to a red pout.

He had some idea what this was about, in fact.

He stopped halfway across the floor, pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead and deliberated for a second or two, before turning and leaning against the door again. At once, a small, brown foot with dainty pink toenails appeared under the edge of the door, kicking at his nearest ankle. "I said _go_!"

So much for random impulses of kindness. She was going to kill him, as likely as not. "This is because of Cadwallader, isn't it? Listen, you've got nothing to prove to that pillock."

The horror in her silence communicated eloquently. When she spoke, her voice was a high-pitched demand. " _What_ did Malcolm say to you?"

Michael cursed under his breath. "Er... nothing. To me."

" _I want to know what he said!_ " she repeated, louder, and Michael groaned.

"All right, he said — because he's a giant stupid arse — that he'd broken up with you today. Because you were, um..."

"Frigid," she said, and now her voice had dropped so low he almost couldn't hear her. 

So the tosser had said it to her first, then. Of course he had. Michael worked against a tightening in his jaw. "Reckon it's easier for him to say that than admit to himself that he's got no fucking clue what he's doing. Told him as much, too."

There was an unsteady intake of breath on the other side of the door. "Was that why he had a black eye at dinner?"

"Nah, that was Terry. I decorated his jaw." Michael shrugged. "You're not to listen to anything that moron said, all right? He broke up with you because he's a self-centred arse, that's why."

"He broke up with me because I told him that I'd been faking my orgasms all the time we've been together," Padma said flatly. 

Michael's eyes widened. In the silence that followed, he could hear another stifled sob. "Aw, hey, don't cry," he said awkwardly. "I suppose... well, it's better that you told him."

"Do you have _any_ idea how nerve-wracking it is to have a guy rubbing away at you till you're raw, chanting, 'please come, please come, please come'? As though I were not coming on purpose! I just got so psyched out by him waiting for it!"

"Right." Michael huffed out a breath. "He's a tosser. So is that why you're in the loos at night, crying your eyes out with your hand down your knickers?"

She sniffled. "Shut up, Corner."

"Hey, don't use this against me later, Patil, but even by Ravenclaw standards, you're smart. You know a bloke like that isn't worthy of you."

"I suppose I do know that," she said sadly. "But I don't know how to have an orgasm."

"Um." Michael's cock was stirring again, and he leaned his forehead against the toilet door and glared down at it. "See, it's probably not the best idea, you trying when you're all tense and unhappy." He drew a deep breath, as the full impact of what she'd said dawned on him. "You mean... you've _never_ —? Even... on your own?" She was seventeen, how was that possible?

The silence from inside the stall was answer enough. "That's not really helping," she said in a tight voice after a few moments.

"Um, no. Sorry. I didn't mean to... You know, it's all right," Michael said bracingly. He wasn't sure what more to say. It sounded very sad and deprived to not be able to wank and get off. "I mean... you'll figure it out in time. It's not rocket science. Um, for a non-Muggle equivalent, make that advanced Arithmancy."

"I know what rocket science is, and I can do advanced Arithmancy," she retorted immediately, and he couldn't help but grin at the note of piqued pride in her voice.

"If you say so." He stretched, stifling a yawn, and looked down on the tent in his pyjama bottoms, wondering with a stirring of guilt whether it would be very bad of him if he tossed off to the thought of Patil wanking, before going back to sleep. It hardly seemed fair, all things considered. That would probably not stop him, though.

"I reckon I should be doing my business in the boys' bathroom," he said. "And get back to bed. As should you. Will you be all right?"

"Sure," she said, and he could just picture that haughty tilt to her chin. The image didn't go too well with the hoarse voice, but that seemed to be the end of the conversation.

He sighed. "Well, good night," he murmured, turned and started walking out. Slowly. There came no goodnight wishes in return.

But as he was standing on the threshold vacillating, because it seemed weird to just leave her this way, her voice reached him, softer than before, almost pleading. "Michael?" 

Something about it made the hairs at his nape rise and stand on end, not in an unpleasant way. She hardly ever addressed him by his given name; in fact he couldn't recall one such instance.

"Yeah?" he answered, just as softly.

"Do you know... how to do it? I mean, for a girl?"

Michael felt a moment's dizziness as all the blood in his body rushed to the main central. He closed the door to the corridor, and walked back to her stall. "Yeah." The word came out an unvoiced whisper, and he felt himself blush. Clearing his throat, he spoke with more confidence. "I've obviously never had a female orgasm myself, but I've been present at quite a few."

There came a hissing exhalation of breath from the other side of the door. "Corner, do you _have_ to be such a smug prat about it?"

He bristled, actually feeling a bit hurt by the accusation. "That's just the way I talk! You know that. I didn't mean to brag. You're asking for advice, I think, so I was offering my... credentials, as it were."

He could hear her swallow, simmer down. "Yeah. Sorry. I didn't mean to... I'm feeling a bit at a disadvantage here," she said quietly, all the hot air gone out of her, and that was all it took to make a surge of protectiveness rise in him — the same emotion that had made that hex to Cadwallader's snooty mug feel so satisfying, although frankly, that was something he'd been itching to do for weeks.

For whatever reason.

"Hey, I can understand that," he murmured. "But I'm not looking to _take_ advantage, right now, if that helps. Let's call a truce until we leave the room, all right?"

There was silence. "Um, I'm nodding," she whispered after a moment, with a sort of smile in her voice. "I mean, yes." Another silence, before it burst out of her. "You see... I just can't figure it out. I'm doing everything right. I know where things are. But things just... don't happen. I only get wound-up and frustrated and feel like I can't _breathe_."

It was such a bloody turn-on simply to have her confide in him about something so intimate, and Michael tried to push back the haze of arousal hovering over his mind, to focus on her distress rather than the idea of her wanking, so he'd be able to think. He could remember Cho needing plenty of time to get into things on occasion, and he supposed that was the nearest reference he had. "It can be complicated for girls. Much more than for boys, I think. You need to be relaxed, all right? Not try too hard, not at once. Just... explore a bit. Do you know where your clit is?"

That earned him a minor hissy-fit on the other side of the door; she actually banged her fist on the door. "Of course I know where my bloody clit is! What sort of a question is that?"

"Truce, remember!" he said quickly. "All right, Patil, sorry about that. But what I meant to say is try to stroke a little there. Maybe just outside your lips, and don't rub too hard, not at first. And touch your breasts at the same time, and, I don't know, think of something that turns you on."

"All right," she whispered, and Michael almost swallowed his tongue in the ensuing silence. She'd meant _now_? He bit back a groan, his hand drifting down to cup his cock through his pyjamas, pressing down and gripping the shaft. He could hear faint, rustling sounds, so faint he had to imagine what was going on, and his imagination was running _wild_. A minute passed, maybe two, and she hadn't asked him to leave yet. Was she breathing a bit faster? He turned to lean against the door, and caught sight of himself in the mirror, face flushed and eyes hooded and lips parted to aid his heightened breath. He looked kind of pitiful really, and he turned his back to the mirror, facing the door again.

"Is it... hell, Patil, do you want me to stay?" he asked gruffly.

Her breath was definitely going faster, he heard it in her shaky voice. "I... I don't know... Swear you won't tell anyone?"

"I swear on _The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Amphibians, Reptiles and Invertebrates_ , he said fervently, and grinned when he heard a choked little giggle.

"Don't go, all right?" she whispered, and the way she said it was just so damn... _endearing_ , like a small girl wanting someone to stay with her in the dark. She'd already got him by the balls, but that note of uncertainty stole sweet and ensnaring around his heart.

"I won't," he whispered back. Wild horses couldn't drag him away at this point, but he figured he'd keep that sentiment to himself.

Another minute, and she was still silent except for that fast breathing. There was an occasional creak from the toilet lid, as if she was shifting around.

"Are you getting wet?" Michael licked his lips, trying to keep his voice businesslike. Trying, and failing. "Just spread it around a bit, it's going to feel better."

"I think... yeah," she said, in a soft, small voice that made his entire body flush hot and cold. He could just imagine her testing with a finger, sliding it up over her clit. Fucking hell. This was Patil, gorgeous, brilliant Padma Patil who always had an air like she was indulging the unwashed masses every time he talked to her, and the fact that she was getting off on this had him shaking close to the edge already.

Just a little bit later came the first sound, a soft grunt. Michael slipped a hand inside his pyjama bottoms and started stroking himself, automatically, with a little grimace at how good it felt to give in to the urge. "All right?"

She didn't answer this time, but her breathing was ragged and she was making more of those choked, quiet noises, as though she was trying not to make a sound but couldn't quite manage. He could actually hear the slick sounds of her pussy, now, and he let out a little groan himself. "What are you thinking of?"

Her voice was whispery soft. "Nothing. That you're there. Just outside. It's so..."

"It's hot," he said. "You're really fucking hot. I'm hard enough to hammer nails."

"Are you—?"

"Touching myself? You bet." He slipped his palm over the head of his cock, smearing the pre-come out, indulging the fantasy that it was her wetness on him, and his eyes closed. 

She drew a hitching breath, and there was a regular creaking sound from the toilet lid. "Oh..." Her breath was really coming hard now, and glancing down below the edge of the door he saw her feet, legs stretched out enough so he could see those pretty, pink-tipped toes curl. The trembling arch of her feet told of the tension in her, and Michael groaned as pleasure fired off in his entire body, rushing hot to his groin. He gave his cock a few firm strokes and came, spurting in hard, warm spasms over his hand inside his pyjamas.

Knees shaking, he leaned against the door and tried to get his wind back. What about her — had she...? But she was still panting desperately, and just as it seemed her breathing had reached a pitch where something had to give, she let out a defeated moan and drew her feet back. "I _can't_. It's no good," she said, angry tears in her voice, and Michael forced himself upright and cast a silent cleaning spell on his hand and his stomach.

"You can," he said, still winded from his orgasm. "Trust me. You just need to... to recognise the sensation, that's what's tricky the first time—" Shit, he was talking out of his arse, really. The first time he'd come, he'd been twelve and had woken up from a dream of Professor Sinistra, with her (well, his) hand wrapped around his cock and spunk shooting all over his stomach. Easy as pie. "Just relax for a bit," he suggested. He needed a breather himself to clear the fog from his brain, to be honest.

There were footsteps coming down the corridor.

That sobered him up in a second. They both froze — well, he did, certainly, and Patil gasped and then went quiet, only their shallow, strained pants breaking the silence. It might be one of the Carrows, and they'd be in so much trouble if they were discovered. They had it in for him already, after numerous detentions, and while Padma had been more discreet in her DA activities, she hadn't escaped a couple of sessions with she-Carrow, either. The creeps would jump at any excuse to punish them.

The footsteps came closer while Michael looked around wild-eyed, and it finally occurred to him to reach for the handle on the door to the next stall, not that it would do much more than delay the inevitable. Two students in the toilets at night at the same time would be enough to cause suspicion. But just then, Padma pushed the door open and a slender hand reached around it to yank him inside. "Shh," she hissed, and slid the door and the lock shut silently — as the steps continued past in the corridor, in the direction of the boys' bathrooms. Through the walls, they heard the door to a stall click shut.

Michael closed his eyes for a moment and sagged against the door, and then he opened his eyes and _saw_ her. Her black hair was falling loose over her shoulders and her dark eyes were defiant and feverishly bright, and she was blushing so hard for him that her cheeks seemed to match the colour of her cherry pink pyjamas.

Michael stood up, and touched his fingertips to her cheek. He wanted to kiss her, so much it felt like a physical thirst for it, but she averted her gaze, and he was too unsure of his welcome. A kiss, that would mean something, for a girl like her. Something more committed and serious than ... whatever crazy chance this was. So instead, he cast a silencing charm and then angled himself behind her and curled an arm around her waist, turning with her against the wall.

And oh, she was pliant and cooperative, and just like that she was already shaking, tense like a coiled wire in his arms. He ached to touch her himself, to help her past the last hurdle, but it didn't seem right, somehow. She'd never invited that, and he figured she needed to do this for herself.

"Try again, Patil," he breathed in her ear. "You're close, I swear it. Trust your body, let things happen. It will take nothing at all."

She hiccupped out a desperate-sounding moan, one hand bracing against the wall while her other hand slid down the front of her pyjamas again. At once, her breath picked up, and she pressed against him, restless and writhing, making his spent cock twitch against her round arse. Michael moved his free hand up to cup her breast, gently tweaking the stiff point of her nipple through the soft, sleek silk, and he could feel her body sag and tense against him as her knees buckled, then braced.

"You're beautiful," he whispered. "Most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. You can't quote me on it later, but it's true."

She whimpered, a plaintive high-pitched sound, and she was breathing as though she'd run a mile. "Oh no, no, it's too _much_ —" But her hand didn't stop its frantic, tense motions between her legs, and he took his cue from that.

"It may feel like it, just now, but it will be so good. It will be so worth it." He toyed with her stiff, plump nipple through the silk and let his other hand fall to cup her hand between her legs. She was so hot there, he could feel it even through her pyjamas and the sheltering cup of her own hand, and something about the touch of his hand seemed to galvanise her, strengthen her resolve. She cried out and shook her head in defence or disbelief, but her fingers kept moving, faster and faster, and then she gave a dry, hoarse sob, and another one, straining up on tiptoes, stiff and trembling all over, shaking them both. 

_"Michael_ ," she gasped.

Oh, _yes_. "Just let it happen." His lips brushed over the hot curve of her cheek. "I've got you..."

The arch of pleasure that went through her in the next moment reverberated into his own body as he slid his hand back up to her waist to hold her safe and upright. "It's fine, you're fine," he murmured, entranced. She was more than fine, gorgeous, a miracle really, her head falling back on his shoulder and then falling forward as that invisible force shook her small, firm body, her silky, sweet-scented hair tickling his face.

When it was over, she turned in his arms, breathing in shaky, hard gasps still, and pressed her face to his throat.

He wrapped both arms around her, and stroked her long hair until her breathing slowed down and she finally drew back a fraction to look up at him warily. Michael gave her a light, reassuring squeeze with his arms and grinned at her. "So, did that meet your expectations?" he teased her.

The wariness gave way to surprise, and then she bit her lip with a shy huff of laughter. "Yeah, it wasn't horrible. In fact, I may do it again sometime." The brave attempt at sarcasm in that wobbly voice did funny things to Michael's chest, and again, he wanted so badly to kiss her. He almost did, dipping his head and angling for it, but she'd lowered her own head in the same moment, looking down between them. "Um... didn't you...?"

"What? Oh." He straightened himself awkwardly, pulled out of the daze. "Yes, sure. Earlier." He nodded to the door.

"Out there?" Her eyes widened. "I didn't notice."

"Well, _I_ noticed," he said with a wry smile and a shrug.

She grinned back at him then, wide and beautiful with relief and so uncharacteristically, but cutely abashed, and Michael took a deep breath and a step back, because if he didn't he really would kiss her, and he wasn't sure what that would mean. And if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he ought to be sure what it meant before he kissed Padma Patil.

Not least because she might hurt him if he got it wrong. And it wasn't even his bollocks he was most afraid for.

"I'll go out first. Just wait a minute, yeah? He slid the bolt out of the latch and reached out and gave her head a little noogie, grinning when she squirmed and scowled at him. "Don't overdo it and sprain that right hand now. The DA needs you."

He slipped out of the stall and had made it almost to the door before a stinging hex hit his arse. "That's for _'Do you know where your clit is?'_ ," she said over his clamped-down little yelp, mimicking a smug, smart-arse tone as she repeated his words. 

Michael just flashed her a smirk over his shoulder as he left the room, because really, that stinging hex could have been a lot worse.

***

His lips were soft against hers at first, and she could still feel his teasing smirk on them. But then they parted, and his hand came up to tangle in her hair as he slanted his head to kiss her with firm determination, his tongue sliding inside her mouth along her own.

Padma felt dizzy. She'd been waiting for this kiss for months — no, it must have been _years_ — and she hadn't fully admitted it to herself until this moment. Her arms gentled their grip around his neck and she swayed in against him, trying to tell him with every nerve and muscle in her body what she wanted. _Him_. Infuriating, charming, geeky, hot-headed Michael Corner. She'd wanted him from the moment he'd started to annoy her, it seemed.

And that certainly hadn't taken him long.

She drew back from the kiss, and saw his eyelids flutter, felt his lips hang on hers. "Here's a riddle for you," she whispered. "When a reptile-phobic girl is separated from her twin for the first night of her life and she can't stop crying, what is the worst possible way a boy can try to cheer her up?"

"Lend her his copy of _The Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Amphibians, Reptiles and Invertebrates_ ," he said, his low laugh tickling her lips. "How the heck was I supposed to know at that point that you were phobic?"

"I came to appreciate the gesture better when I learned that it was your most prized possession." She touched his cheek. "But by the time I realised that, we were already at odds with each other by rote."

That hadn't taken them long, either.

Michael smiled against her lips. "Hey, it's kept things interesting over the years."

"Mmm. But this is interesting, too." She blushed then, pulling back a little more to study his face. "I... I didn't think... you never mentioned that... that incident, again, so I thought perhaps that it was just me, wanting more," she said quietly.

He smoothed her hair away from her face, behind her ear. "Well, shortly after the _incident_ in the loos—"

"As it shall henceforth be called," she broke in, biting her lower lip on a giggle. "Capitalised, if you please."

"Shortly after The Incident In the Loos, there was the other, lesser incident of the Carrows deciding to rearrange my exterior one night. And after I recovered from that, there was the completely minor incident of the Battle of Hogwarts, and after that, damn it, you went off to India with your parents and sister for the whole summer, and every time I sent you an owl I got a snarky one back."

"Because yours were snarky, too!"

"Well, it seemed safest to begin with. And then I thought I might just wait until you came back for your eighth year."

"Yes," she admitted. "I thought that, too. And then I didn't know where to start."

"I'd itched to take that swing at Malcolm Cadwallader since the day you started going out with him." Michael cupped her face in both hands, a gesture so gentle her heart caught in her throat. "Padma. I wanted to ask you to the Yule Ball in our fourth year. And I sweated over it so long that Harry got to you first, the prat."

"I'd said no to everyone before that, hoping you'd ask me, but you never did. And when Harry asked, it seemed so stupid to imagine that you—"

"It wasn't stupid. The two of us taking so long to figure it out, that's stupid, but I suppose we'll just have to get over it."

"Speak for yourself," Padma said with a grin. "Hell shall freeze over before I admit to being stupid."

"Oh, really? Then I take it back, too." He grinned back at her, and took both her hands in his. "We're the smartest people to ever have taken seven years, two weeks and three days to admit they were in love."

'In love'. All the factors seemed to slot into their right place, to assemble into such beautiful, perfect sense, with those two words uttered. Padma nodded, tears in her eyes, and had to give him another kiss, just for saying them so bravely as that. 

"All right," she whispered when they came up for air after a long, sweet while. "So now, _you_ tell _me_ why a raven is like a writing desk."

"There have been many answers suggested, even though the writer intended none," Michael replied, slipping into academic, pontificating mode. "Any riddle that's posed with an intention to be non-sensical will invite speculation, obviously. One of the simpler answers is, because neither is made of cheese." He paused, smiling as he allowed sufficient time for her to groan. "Another one is, because there's a 'b' in both, and an 'n' in neither."

"Now that is at least slightly clever," she remarked, although she groaned at that, too, as she started to steer him backwards to the nearest sofa.

"Of course, I should mention the author's own answer, upon countless requests, to his own riddle, which was: 'Because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat, and it is nevar put with the wrong end in front'. Actually, I should write that one out for you, so that you can see — there was an intentional misspelling, a pun, that was taken for a typographical error—'"

"Michael," she murmured, and kissed him again. "Shut up. You're not making the least bit of sense." The backs of his knees met the edge of the sofa and obligingly folded, and she gave him a slight push to help him on his way. 

He smiled up at her from the plush depths of the sofa, looking a bit dazed. "And yet you're still kissing me."

"Yes, there's a riddle worthy of a Ravenclaw," Padma allowed, laughing as she crawled into his lap. "But I suppose you've already figured it out."

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> Michael's riddle about the raven and the writing desk is of course taken from Alice In Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. I got the various suggestions for an answer to the riddle from [here](http://www.wisegeek.com/why-is-a-raven-like-a-writing-desk.htm) and [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland).


End file.
